


things beyond description

by carnival_papers



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Bad Francis, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Flogging, Forgiveness, Internalized Homophobia, Intimacy, Les Misérables References, M/M, Masturbation, Non-Chronological, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:42:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27538549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carnival_papers/pseuds/carnival_papers
Summary: ALes MisérablesAU/fusion.There was a moment, years ago, when everything changed. Even through the amber haze of intoxication, he remembers this: a boy with forged papers nicking an extra ship’s biscuit. His wide, pleading eyes; the hungry look to his face. How he had begged, said,Lieutenant Crozier, but the choice was already made, Francis Crozier’s life already unspooling a thread that led only to this—the edge of the Thames in the early evening, drunk on cheap whiskey and his own self-loathing.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 15
Kudos: 31
Collections: Fall Fitzier Exchange





	1. Crozier Derailed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snagov](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snagov/gifts).



> Written for the prompt: _AU where Francis is a strict naval officer who once caught a skinny midshipman stealing bread. 15 years later comes face to face with that same man as the commander of Erebus. Francis wants to expose him as a criminal undeserving of his post but wars also with his attraction (and gradually falling in love with James). (Yes, this is Les Mis. I confess to my sins.)_
> 
> [snagov](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snagov), thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to write something that was at once rigorous and challenging and also a bit like coming home. I'm so sorry to present this to you as an unfinished work, but I felt it best to take a little extra time to finish the last chapter rather than rush the final product. It will be posted just as soon as it's ready. In the meantime, I hope you'll enjoy these first two chapters, as well as the [accompanying instrumental playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6QQvgEAU3nSq7PfmFs62fT?si=wE5tCvDrQ3Owa3u6lzF8-w). 💜

It was never supposed to end this way. Hard to remember, now, all that’s brought him here, to the edge of the Thames in the early evening, drunk on cheap whiskey and his own self-loathing. His fingers and toes have gone numb. The Arctic had been far colder than this, a cold that haunted them at every step, but somehow, he still feels a chill.

There was a moment, years ago, when everything changed. Even through the amber haze of intoxication, he remembers this: a boy with forged papers nicking an extra ship’s biscuit. His wide, pleading eyes; the hungry look to his face. How he had begged, said, _Lieutenant Crozier_ , but the choice was already made, Francis Crozier’s life already unspooling a thread that led only to this.

It will be easy, he thinks, to die. The river is fast and the cold even faster. It will be over quickly, before he has a chance to change his mind.

Good.

In some other version of this story, he is a hero. In that life, he is engaged to Sophia Cracroft, planning their wedding, and each day Franklin tells him how proud he is, what a good match they are. The Admiralty lauds him for his discovery of the Passage— _his_ expedition, _his_ discovery. He never sees that threadbare young man again.

But he is not a hero. Franklin is dead; Sophia has rejected him; the Passage is a lost cause. And as he removes his shoes, he remembers that boy, just a middie back then, who has been haunting him his whole life. Ironic, he thinks, that he should come to mind as he prepares to die. Even in death, he is impossible to escape.

James Fitzjames. The name sharp and hot as blood in his mouth. He wants to spit it out like a poison, but it’s pointless. This man already lives in his bones, his veins, his mind.

He steps closer to the water, lets it stream over his toes. Frigid. The current of the Thames is fast—something he’s always admired, this bit of wild nature here in central London, not quite tamed. Tonight he’s grateful for how briskly it will sweep him downriver, how, with open arms, it will embrace him and pull him under. At least in death there will be the comfort of water, perhaps the only thing that has ever loved him back.

No more stalling. He unbuttons his coat, shifts it off like skin. Takes the time to fold it carefully, placing it behind his shoes. A Navy man to the end, he thinks. Like a sickness he can’t shake.

A deep breath, vapor forming in the air. He musters up the last bit of nerve in his body—not courage, it’s wrong to call this courage—and wades in.

Under the surface, everything is ink-black. He hadn’t realized how his body would go rigid, all his muscles tense and unyielding, strung tight. He doesn’t want to breathe but his lungs do, his body does, and he finds himself gasping and gulping and choking and fighting with the water like a drowning child. That is what this is—drowning. It hadn’t occurred to him that it might be a struggle, that some primitive part of him would cling to life. He had simply expected to walk in and be done with it. Somewhere, there is shouting, but water pounds in his ears, pours into and out of him, claims him and swallows him up.

He does not want to live. But it’s possible that he does not want to die, either.

*

In 1832, Francis Crozier is a lieutenant on _Hecla_ , standing on the lower deck inspecting a young man’s papers. He doesn’t know yet that this will be the moment that sets everything in motion, that, in a little more than a decade, sends him to the banks of the Thames with a desire for oblivion. All he knows now is that the man before him is more like a boy, maybe nineteen at most, with a cautious yet frenetic air and wide, dark eyes. He’s tall, hair an unruly mop of brown, all lank and limbs and nervous energy.

The papers the man handed him are crumpled slightly, as if they had been clutched like a lifeline, like a ticket out. Crozier hadn’t seen him in the sea of bodies hustling on and off the ship—the wives embracing their husbands, the fathers embracing their children, the sons embracing their mothers. Crozier had come here alone, no woman on his arm, his only accompaniment the last swig of whiskey still searing in his belly.

“Mr. Fitzjames, is it?” Crozier says. He thinks, _James Fitzjames? Unfortunate._

“Yes, sir,” the man says, straightening his back. “Lieutenant…”

“Crozier,” he says. “Francis.”

The only person who calls him _Francis_ these days is Sir John Franklin, the captain of this expedition and a commander of questionable competency. He has heard stories of what misfortune befell Franklin on the Coppermine expedition—how he fell into the river and nearly died. How his men ate moss, their boots, each other. A large part of Crozier finds Franklin disgusting. A poseur, almost, this man who could have kept his own men alive, who wasted them out of, what, self-preservation? That he should be in command—that he should replace Parry—it turns Crozier’s stomach, sets bile burning somewhere in his esophagus.

Fitzjames clears his throat. “Lieutenant Crozier,” he says, extending a hand for the papers again. “Thank you.”

“A moment, lad,” Crozier says. “You’re certain these are the papers you were given?

He asks because there’s something wrong with them. Crozier can’t quite put his finger on it. Then—here. Where today’s date should be, there’s an 11 printed instead of a 1.

“I—I’m quite sure, sir,” Fitzjames says.

It’s possible someone made a mistake. Mistakes do happen; they _are_ only human, after all, and being back on the shore after months and years at sea can make the mind feel muddy. But this is not the sort of mistake men in the Navy make, not the sort of thing that would go unnoticed by double- and triple-checking eyes. Suddenly more details come into focus: the slant of the writing, the color of a stamp, two letters transposed in the word _Admiralty_. Even the texture of the pages feels off.

He tilts the pages toward Fitzjames. “This date here,” he says, pointing. “The eleventh is a week from now.”

“I suppose it is, sir.”

He becomes aware of Franklin standing somewhere behind Fitzjames, tucked into a corner, watching. Hawkish.

Fitzjames feels very small now, very young. He’s only just eighteen, if the birthdate on the paperwork is to be believed. It was not so long ago that Crozier was that young. With his round face and quiet voice and soft body, he’d been the target of much teasing. Fitzjames won’t run into that—there’s a certain sinew to his neck that tells Crozier there are muscles below his shirt, that he’s already made himself strong, like sharpening a knife.

“I’m not sure what’s happened, sir,” Fitzjames says, so sweetly Crozier almost wants to believe him. “I’ve done nothing but anticipate this day for weeks.”

The boy is looking at him with pleading eyes that say, _I have nowhere else to go_.

He will come to hate this face. But for now, Crozier presses the papers into his trembling hands, says, “A simple mistake, I’m sure.” Claps the boy on the shoulder when he doesn’t quite seem to understand. “Welcome aboard, Mr. Fitzjames.”

Fitzjames, for a moment, is dumbstruck. Then, quietly, he says, “Thank you, sir.”

Crozier watches him lope off to the berth to store his things.

“Francis!” Franklin says, a smile like a fishhook gruesomely pulling back his lips.

He dreads these interactions with Franklin, who always wants to quibble over details, concerned with appearances more than actualities. In the few meetings they’ve had together, Franklin has shown himself to be equal parts condescending and easily bruised. So Crozier merely nods in deference, clasping his hands behind his back.

“Was something the matter with that boy’s reporting orders?” Franklin says.

In the future he will think of this conversation and imagine a map, a river that forks into two streams. It’s this decision that sends him down one way or the other. Even at the Thames, he will not be able to explain to himself why he did this.

What he does is lie for Fitzjames. Does not say, _the papers were forged_ —a choice he will regret for the rest of his life. He claims it as his own mistake, says he misread a number or skimmed over a vital piece of information. He won’t be able to remember his exact words, perhaps because they don’t matter, but more likely because the outcome is the same no matter what: Franklin drawing him into his cabin and berating him, saying this is just the latest in a series of mistakes, calling him a lush and a loafer and demanding that he either dry out or get off the ship. Franklin saying Crozier is a fine sailor—how Crozier clings to that!—but that he is a God-fearing man with no time or space for officers who would rather be among the Philistines than their crewmates.

He spends hours or maybe minutes in Franklin’s cabin, shame and anger coiling hot inside of him. He says _yes, sir_ , and _of course, sir_ , and _forgive me, sir_ even though he means none of them. Keeps insults hidden under his tongue to mutter into his pillow, because saying them now will mean scorn, or worse, the lash. He wants to be captain one day, wants to chart the Passage, wants to be more than the low-born, cock-eyed mick that Franklin thinks he is. And if he wants to impress Franklin, he will have to be a brown-nosing, arse-kissing pedant.

So he takes it. Clenches his fists and bites his tongue and keeps his head down. Vows to himself—if Franklin wants cruelty, he’ll get it.

*

The process of drowning is fast and slow at once, and always, always painful. As he thrashes against the water, unable to pull himself up, Crozier holds his breath as long as he can. It is agonizing, trying to keep air in his lungs while he feels a desperate urge to hyperventilate, the shock of the cold sending conflicting signals to different parts of his body. He has no sense of how fast he is moving, or if he is moving at all, and his fingers are numb. There is nothing to hold onto, no way to stop this process that started so many years ago.

This was what he had wanted. Wasn’t it? He had thought it would be less painful, but, as darkness clouds the edges of his vision, he is glad that this was simple, clean, no one else hurt on his way down.

His chest begins to burn with need for air. The river is dark and he is confused and cannot tell which way to try and swim, not that his body would cooperate if he tried. Water fills him up and he is a sinking ship, helpless to stop it, helpless to do anything but surrender. It’s heavy inside him, pulls him down as if to the riverbed—he supposes he will end up there eventually, anyway.

He wonders, was this what it felt like for Franklin, dying in those first long days on the ice? Illness had taken him quickly, illness or something worse, and in his last hours, he hardly seemed alive at all. Crozier remembers the jaundiced tone of Franklin’s face, the sick thrill he felt when Stanley finally delivered the news of Franklin’s death. There was something to be said, of course, about that being Crozier’s only route to command, but at the time, he’d only felt satisfaction that the old bastard had finally gotten what he deserved.

If he had died out there, this would have been easier. He thinks now that that was what ought to have happened. They lost so many men; what would one more have been? He knows well that there is no one who will miss him, no one who will mourn him, though, as his consciousness begins to fade, he imagines Sophia with a handkerchief to her cheek, dabbing at tears she cannot explain for a man she does not love.

His last thoughts before he loses consciousness are strange and jumbled, a mix of images and sounds and feelings he cannot connect: the ice, the lash, a young man’s face, hate and want and regret, the taste of blood and salt in his mouth.

*

They are wintering somewhere near Lancaster Sound when things begin to strain. It has not been a particularly eventful voyage thus far; in fact, everything has gone shockingly smoothly, which sets Crozier on edge. The boy, Fitzjames, is almost sweet to him, unsettlingly docile, though the other middies have said he can be a bit of a brat. And Crozier sees that, too, in his vain attention to his clean-shaven face and the particular length of his hair, and how he loudly regales the seamen with tales that must border on untruth. But he seems to be a good worker, a hard worker, particularly when Crozier is around, as if repenting for the sin of being aboard the ship in the first place.

There are moments, too, when Crozier thinks he might even like the boy. Fitzjames talks and talks and _talks_ about how badly he wants to be an officer, all the places he wants to travel, and Crozier indulges him. He had felt that way, once, had dreamt of stamping far-off lands with his name, before he’d realized how the ice invigorated him more than anything. The boy wants to go to Brazil or somewhere else that’s warm, he says, some place not so dreary, but he’ll be happy wherever the Navy takes him—he’s lucky, he says, to get to go anywhere.

One morning, Crozier is adjusting the dip circle, resetting the needle, tightening its screw, and Fitzjames is there, entirely too enthusiastic, asking how the device works. The other lieutenant shoos him away, but in a moment of charity, Crozier brings him closer, shows him how the needle falls, how they track the position of the ship through the angle of the needle, how they carefully record these observations in a big, hand-drawn table. Fitzjames’ brow furrows as he listens, and when Crozier has him observe the deflection of the needle, he squints, the tip of his tongue poking from the corner of his mouth in concentration. He checks the measurement three times before reporting it to Crozier. Though he will need to learn to work more quickly, Fitzjames is precise, and Crozier feels a little swell of pride. He claps the boy on the shoulder, tells him he’s done well, and Fitzjames looks at him with such delight that Crozier almost gets embarrassed.

“Thank you,” Fitzjames says. He glances again to the logbook, the meticulously kept records to which he has now contributed. “I—I should like to learn more about this, Lieutenant Crozier, sir. I’d like to command an expedition of my own one day.”

“All in good time, Mr. Fitzjames,” Crozier says, and he sends the boy on his way. For days after, he thinks of Fitzjames’ shining eyes and how he’d felt, actually being _thanked_ , being seen as useful for once. How sweet it tastes to be appreciated.

This only makes it harder when Franklin finds more and more reasons to chastise him. He is never quite good enough, strict enough, loud enough, Christian enough. One drink at supper and Franklin is tearing at him again, ranting at him about how his _habits_ may well make him unfit for leadership. So Crozier spends nights on the upper deck unable to sleep, pacing the length of the ship, listening to the wind and the flap of the sails. He has always thought of himself as a good sailor and a decent officer, but Franklin makes him second-guess all of that. Is it possible he’s been as useless as he’s feared? One mistake—not even a mistake, really, a _kindness_ —and Franklin had pounced on him as if he were prey.

Now he watches more carefully, especially when Fitzjames is involved. Crozier wants to show Franklin what he’s capable of, that his judgment isn’t clouded by drink or anything else—that one charismatic young man hasn’t somehow made him less of an officer. But Franklin wants a flintier, more severe version of Crozier, so Crozier is determined to give it to him.

The opportunity reveals itself when it is least expected. The men are preparing to mess, and Crozier, in no rush to spend more time with Franklin, circulates from table to table, chatting mindlessly with them about their families or their futures. Fitzjames glances at him and smiles, a small and tentative thing that nevertheless makes Crozier think of sunlight pouring through clouds.

Crozier steps out of the way when the food is served, the usual meal of slop and a ship’s biscuit—something Crozier does not miss, now that he’s an officer. He watches carefully, each man receiving his portion, thanking the cook, until Fitzjames is at the front. And—a curious thing—as Fitzjames rounds the corner back to his table, Crozier watches him slip a second ship’s biscuit into the palm of his hand, not even bothering to hide it.

A sinking feeling. But—if Franklin wants him to be harsh, then he’ll be harsh.

“Mr. Fitzjames!” Crozier calls. “A moment.”

Fitzjames looks back, still smiling, and comes to him without hesitation. Crozier summons up his sternness, thinks again of how Franklin had unloaded on him that first day, before they even set sail. How small he’d felt under Franklin’s eyes, with Franklin’s finger jabbing him in the sternum as he punctuated his points. It will not feel good to do the same to Fitzjames. But if it’s what Franklin wants, he’ll do it.

Fitzjames is still clutching his plate when he stands before Crozier. He says, _yes, sir?_ with such innocence that it almost pains Crozier to think of crushing it. There on the plate are the two biscuits, their bottoms soaking up the unidentifiable mush beneath. “What’s this, Mr. Fitzjames?” Crozier says, as cool and crisp as he can muster.

“Er—my supper, sir,” Fitzjames says. Scoffs, really. And that—Crozier can hold onto that, Fitzjames’ snide little laugh as if this is some joke, the smug look on his face not unlike the one Franklin had worn that day. All pomposity and scorn. His sweetness on the upper deck had been some trick to get ahead—isn’t it always?

Something snaps. He thinks of Fitzjames fifteen, twenty years down the line, fat and balding, still as overweening as he is today. Thinks of Fitzjames heading his own expedition, thinks of Fitzjames as Franklin, too high on himself, his ego in the way of his work. Fitzjames watching his men die in service of his greedy need to stay alive. The churn of a coal engine in Crozier’s chest, pumping hot and black and angry.

“Do you intend to rob your fellows of sustenance?” Crozier says, meting out his words carefully. A part of him likes the bitterness they carry. Likes the way they pummel Fitzjames now, how they chip the smirk from his lips like a chisel.

“Sir, I—“

Plunging his thumb into the lukewarm swill, Crozier seizes one of the biscuits, holds it in the space between them. Turns it in the light, a jeweler inspecting a gem. “This may be a mere biscuit to you, Mr. Fitzjames, but it is all that separates you from death. Or perhaps you’d like to instruct your crewmates how best to hunt Arctic game?”

The boy’s hands are trembling. “No, sir,” he says, low, looking up at Crozier with his child’s eyes and child’s frown and child’s petulance. Crozier becomes aware of the hush falling over the crew, the scrape of spoon against plate quieting as their conversation draws attention. _Good_ , he thinks, _let him learn the hard way._

“Remind me, Mr. Fitzjames—how many biscuits are you provisioned per meal?”

Fitzjames’ voice is hardly a whisper when he says, “One, sir.”

Crozier nods. Plunks the biscuit back onto the plate and takes it from Fitzjames’ hands, slams it on the table with such force that liquid spatters the wall. “Do you care to explain, then, why you felt it was your right to take a second?”

He takes some pleasure in the way Fitzjames’ hands fall to his sides, how small he looks with his face downturned, how he seems to draw inward in retreat. “I—I was hungry, Lieutenant Crozier. I’m sorry.”

It’s not enough. Crozier wants to see him break, wants to watch shame and fear and hate boil over in him, the way it had when Franklin had systematically taken Crozier apart. He’d felt a shift somewhere inside him, something cracking and hardening all at once, like a soft-bodied insect wrapping itself in a chitinous exoskeleton.

“Hungry,” Crozier says, contempt turning down the corners of his mouth. “In taking more than your share, you deprive another of his. You take food from the mouths of your friends and brothers. As I recall, this is your first time in the polar regions. Is that right?”

Fitzjames is still. Silent. Crozier waits for an answer. Doesn’t get one.

“I asked you a question, Mr. Fitzjames.”

There’s a bite to the way Fitzjames finally says, “Yes, Lieutenant Crozier.” The sound of his name as sudden and keen as a wasp’s sting.

“Let me explain something to you, then,” Crozier says. There’s a sour rush that comes when Fitzjames clenches his hands into fists, knuckles ivory and freckled. “Act selfishly and you hinder every single one of us. Take more than what you ought and leave your crewmates too weak to pull a sledge, or their minds too cloudy to make a calculation. On the ice, one selfish act can cause innumerable deaths. I’m sure Sir John could tell you all about that.”

From the end of the hallway: “Mr. Crozier, _sir_!”

Franklin with his arms crossed over his chest, with a self-righteous rage on his face. The realization that this has not quite gone to plan. Crozier swallows hard, a pang of remorse rising in his throat, and glances again to Fitzjames. Takes in the cold set of Fitzjames’ jaw, the wet of his eyes. How he looks like a cornered animal, scared but ready to fight.

“There _will_ be consequences for this action, make no mistake,” Crozier hisses, punctuating his words with a crooked finger. And there will be, Crozier will make sure of that; he will deliver them himself if he has to. But Franklin is calling him _Mr. Crozier_ again, stripping him of his rank and respect, and Crozier hates him. Franklin or Fitzjames, he’s not sure which. Perhaps both. The men in the crew are watching as Franklin points him into the officers’ mess, and Crozier can hear their silence, feel them listening, when Franklin slides the door shut and excoriates him for his unchristianly malice.

That night in bed, listening to the creak of the ship, Crozier hangs on Franklin’s words, lobbed, as they had been, like so many bombs: _the Admiralty thinks little of you, and you seem determined to have me think little of you as well_. He wonders now if he was foolish to believe he could ever be more than what he is, that he could somehow transcend the circumstances of his birth. All these years, he has been trying to make something of himself, and he has thought, occasionally, that he has come close—his friendship with James Ross, his promotion to lieutenant, the pride with which his sisters embrace him when he returns home to Banbridge. In his darker moments, he thinks all of it is useless if it does not lead, in turn, to a ship, a sail, an expedition of his own.

How badly he wants to be good enough for the people who determine if he matters. How he wishes and wishes that leadership would come simply and naturally to him the way it does for others. How he dreams of making something of this anger that roars inside of him rather than turning it inward, a weapon to be used against himself. Instead, he pours himself a drink, another and another, until the whiskey numbs the taste of his own disappointment.

*

Consciousness returns in fits. He is on the banks of the Thames again, shivering and vomiting up enough water to fill the river, the world a bleak, blurry fog around him. There is a voice behind him, a steadying hand, someone wrapping a too-small coat around his shoulders. He can’t get warm, and it hurts to breathe, like he’s still underwater, like it’s still pressing in around him on all sides. His hands are blue, or maybe they just _look_ blue. He vomits again and again, until there’s nothing left inside him, and even then, he still heaves, as if his body is trying to expel something worse than just the water.

He had wanted to die. He _had_. But there is some kind of relief that comes from feeling the earth under his palms again. He cannot explain it—his head is too muddled to try to make sense of it now, anyway. He is tired, but his heart is beating. Somehow.

From far off somewhere, he hears his name. His first name. _Francis_. He is weak, though, and when he turns to find the source, all goes dark again, a candle being blown out.

*

It is not the first lashing he has witnessed, nor will it be the last. It is, however, the first one he has ordered, though it will not be the last of those, either. Despite Franklin’s verbal beatings, Crozier feels a certain pride in this, watching Fitzjames be stripped of his shirt, his wrists tied on the beam above him, his pale back stretched out like a canvas.

Fifteen lashes. Hardly anything, really. Crozier himself had received a dozen for a particularly embarrassing drunken incident on _Dotterel_ , when he was just a few years older than Fitzjames. In his recollection, the lash only barely breaks the skin, but Crozier remembers the hot welts that had raised on his back, searing there under his shirt for days, a reminder of his idiocy, the shame he’d felt at being punished before his friends and superiors. Just the one lashing had done the trick; he’d stayed on the straight and narrow since then, never daring to veer too far one way or the other—never again allowing himself to be caught.

Franklin had called him—what was it?— _perverse and barbarous_ , to inflict such a punishment on the boy’s first offense. Bloodthirsty. Crozier had held his tongue, then. Didn’t say, _under the Articles, robbery is punishable by death_. Didn’t remind him of the stories they both knew of men forced to run the gauntlet, their bodies broken and beaten by those they called their brothers. Didn’t tell him that, in all honesty, the punishment was really quite lenient, given the nature of the crime.

Fitzjames looks back at him with an expression Crozier can’t decipher. He had expected to see hatred flaring in Fitzjames’ eyes, but what’s there is something closer to betrayal, hurt, even before the cat falls on his tender skin.

It would be easier if the boy hated him.

The bosun’s mate retrieves the cat, shifts it in his hand, testing its weight. The knots are newly tied, the rope still clean. Crozier is glad not to be the one delivering the punishment. Even now, his hands shake, merely watching Fitzjames anticipate the first strike. This is enough: to hold the bosun’s mate in his power, to count the lashes, to watch Fitzjames suffer.

He says it aloud now: “Fifteen lashes.”

Fitzjames exhales, a ragged breath that is familiar to Crozier, that he too had uttered as he waited to receive his lashes. His muscles flex and tense, preparing for the hurt.

The bosun’s mate will strike Fitzjames once every twelve seconds until the full fifteen lashes have been delivered. In total, the process will last no more than five minutes, accounting some extra time for strikes that miss or fall flat. What is five minutes in the long lifetime of a man? Nothing. Less than nothing—a blink. But after the river, in the endless days of learning again how to live, Crozier will come back to these five minutes, analyzing each moment, the precise angle of each strike, the intonation of Fitzjames’ cries, the rills of blood that trickle down his spine, and he will find himself asking _why_. Why does he feel so driven to hurt Fitzjames? Why does Franklin allow him to have Fitzjames lashed? And why does Fitzjames not meet his eyes with resentment, or spit into his face, or find him in the night and beat him bloody? Why does Fitzjames let him live? Like an inspector searching for evidence, he returns and returns to this scene and comes up empty-handed.

There are no answers here. Only the trappings of violence: blood, sweat, tears.

It starts. The cat is designed to inflict pain, not damage, so it will be several more cracks of the lash before Fitzjames’ back is bleeding. Already, though, he is making small, pained noises, the sounds of a wounded creature with no hope of fighting back. There is a wash of soft pink over Fitzjames’ shoulders, the color almost floral, blooming like something beautiful. Justice and order, Crozier thinks, _are_ beautiful. Is that not what this is?

Two. Fitzjames quivers when the ropes strike him, but he does not cry out. The muscles twitch under his skin, involuntary. When Crozier had received his lashes, he’d wanted something to bite down on, to keep the saltwater stream of curses from escaping. He’d settled for his tongue and bitten so hard he’d drawn blood by the fourth or fifth strike. Now, he tastes it in his mouth, metallic and sharp, as the bosun’s mate readies for the third blow.

It falls in a heavy arc onto Fitzjames’ back, landing with a dull thunk. Crozier wants to see the boy’s face, but it would be unbecoming of him to stride that way now, delighting in the mask of torment that no doubt contorts Fitzjames’ features. He imagines it instead: perspiration glistening at the base of his throat, spit dripping from his lips like a beaten dog, tears in those wide, lovely eyes.

The fourth strike finally elicits the sound Crozier has been craving: not quite a scream, but something closer to a howl, loosed from the back of Fitzjames’ throat, so fierce and sudden that more than one of the men flinches at it. Fitzjames hangs his head, hair falling around his face. His flesh is the mottled maroon of the meat of a fig. Crozier wants to press his palm to it, feel the heat radiating, hear Fitzjames hiss at the new searing pain. The red is darkest over his shoulder blades, where the skin thins over his bones. These will be the places that bleed first, blood already pooling just under the surface.

Like lightning, the fifth strike cuts through the charged air. In the officers’ mess after Fitzjames’ theft, Crozier had defended his decision to Franklin: _the boy needs to learn_. Franklin had fought against it, argued bitterly with Crozier, but stopped short of forbidding him to have Fitzjames punished. Franklin said he washed his hands of it. Took no responsibility for what happened. Like Pilate placing Christ’s fate in the hands of an angry crowd.

It’s the sixth lash that finally draws blood. Crozier exhales. Follows the scarlet stream as it catches Fitzjames’ sweat and rolls down his spine, below the waistband of his trousers. Had it happened so quickly when he himself was under the lash? He remembers there being hardly any blood, but it’s been years now, his memory gone cloudy from drink and days at sea. Most clearly, he remembers what happened after: hours spent in the sick bay under the hands of a caring doctor, who had cleaned his wounds, put up with his grousing, even told him he was doing well as he gritted his way through the application of cold, briny seawater to the lacerations.

Seven. Fitzjames panting now, his sounds no longer distinguishable from one another—it isn’t an unbroken wail or the guttural grunts Crozier has heard men make; it’s something stranger, more animal, from somewhere deeper. He shakes and Crozier wants to steady him, not as a comfort but to ensure that the cat lands cleanly where it should, that the knots have space to embed themselves into the muscle and flesh and be torn away, leaving nothing but an ache in their absence.

The eighth falls over the already-open wound, and Fitzjames twists away from it, muscles flexing, blood spilling forth again. A new bit of flesh torn away. Crozier wonders absently if these wounds will scar, if, years from now, some lover will press his fingers to the smooth, off-white spots and ask, _who did this to you?_ There are whispers about Fitzjames’ inclinations, and Crozier has heard tell of brotherly touches that linger too long, of nights when Fitzjames is absent from his hammock and not on watch on the upper deck, when he returns with mussed hair and coal dust on the palms of his hands.

Perhaps the lash will beat that out of him, too, Crozier thinks, as the bosun’s mate strikes for the ninth time. The frayed ends of the cat are dyed red now, and the mate takes the cords in hand and wipes the pieces of flesh and clots of blood from the rope before preparing to hit Fitzjames again. Looking back on their first meeting, Crozier thinks he must have felt something _off_ about Fitzjames, beyond the forged papers. It had to have been there, lurking just out of sight. He thinks again of the boy and his stolen biscuit, and how, behind his eyes, there was an unspoken promise, a willingness to drop to his knees and give whatever was needed to save his hide. Yes—Crozier sees it now. A feeling of revulsion washes over him.

He takes pride in how Fitzjames keens upon the tenth lash. A plaintive, anguished sound, the kind of sound Crozier imagines Christ making on the cross, like a soul leaving a body. When he speaks to Fitzjames in the days after, he will remember this sound as well as he remembers the names of knots, the smell of his mother’s cooking. It etches itself into his bones, and it will echo under the water when he is trying to die. On nights he cannot sleep, this sound will find him, alternately tormenting and pleasing him. He had thought himself a good person, once. He realizes now that what matters is not if he’s good, but if he’s _right_. And he is right. He’s sure of that.

By the eleventh strike, Fitzjames’ back is a wash of scarlet, like wine spilled over his shoulders. The doctor will be kind in his firm way, but Crozier wants to irritate the wounds, prod and poke at them until they bleed new. He hates this man, this Fitzjames. Forms the word in his mouth and hangs on it, a granule of salt dissolving on his tongue. _Hates_ him. Hates him for his flagrant disregard of right and wrong, for his forged papers, for his theft, for his cockiness, for his eyes and face and how they had led Crozier to believe he might be something other than what he is—a criminal, a sodomite, a blight on this ship and the whole Navy.

Crozier stops counting. He will have to explain this to Franklin, the imbecile, blinded by his sanctimony, unwilling to see what a danger Fitzjames is, how his very presence on _Hecla_ threatens the integrity of the Admiralty. Crozier feels mad with this realization, these pieces falling into place, the willing ignorance of his superior. He wishes he were the one holding the cat, that he were the one aiming each blow. He wants to grip Fitzjames’ face in his hand like a child’s and ask him: _have you learned your lesson?_ Wants to rough him up a little, the way he himself had been roughed up as a middie, brawling in the name of playfulness to excise old buried conflicts. Wants his own knuckles bloody—with Fitzjames’ blood or his own, it doesn’t matter. Wants Fitzjames’ throat under his palms, wants those eyes welling with tears, wants to watch him sob and struggle and break.

Something begins to knot inside Crozier, like a hot iron held against his skin, quickening his breath. Fitzjames goes quiet for the last blow and it isn’t enough; Crozier wants him loud and hurting again. His wrists are rubbed raw where they were tied, the skin pink and soft and tender. What would it feel like to wrap his fingers around them, hear Fitzjames wince, squeeze until the bone digs into his palm? Fitzjames’ back, too, like a cut of uncooked beef, white marbled into a sea of red. One of the Marines takes Fitzjames by the unmarred muscle of his arm and turns him, slowly, toward the officers.

Crozier gets a good look at him now, for the first time. Fitzjames’ chest heaves—he’s skinnier than Crozier had expected, ribs just visible above the slate of muscle at his stomach. Fitzjames’ face is wet with sweat or tears, hair stuck flat to his forehead. There is a kind of quaver to his bottom lip, his jaw working as if trying to swallow down vinegar, an occasional small gasp at each movement that irritates his back. _Good_ , Crozier thinks, _it ought to hurt._ Fitzjames keeps his eyes forward, for the most part, not making eye contact with anyone. Crozier hadn’t wanted to, either, after he’d been lashed, too ashamed to see how his friends laughed at him, what a fool he was. But when Fitzjames passes in front of Crozier, his shirt in his hands, there is a moment—a long, pointed moment—when their eyes meet, and Fitzjames does not look away, and Crozier searches for what he knows must be there: rancor and resent and rage, roiling somewhere in his heart.

He finds none of it. Only sees a lachrymose young man too tired to fight. The little light from the illuminators falls over Fitzjames’ features, the wet on his cheeks shining, the lines that mar his boyish face sunk deeper now. He looks older. Harder. Crozier sets his jaw against the impulse to make some remark, only holds Fitzjames’ gaze for as long as Fitzjames allows it.

The sight of his back, up close, is thrilling. A masterpiece in shades of cream and crimson. Crozier drinks it in like so much whiskey: the tension in the air, the taste of salt and iron in his mouth, the sight of Fitzjames in agony, justice delivered.

*

He is in someone else’s bed. It still hurts to breathe, like there’s an anvil on his chest, making every inhalation a painful task. If he fights this and breathes too deeply, he devolves into hacking coughs that feel as if he’s trying to expel his very lungs, and then he feels weak again and has to close his eyes, lest the world begin to tilt.

He is in someone else’s bed and he is warm and he is alive. Strange, how he feels, cold shut up in his joints but sweat on his skin, chills that wrack his body though he is wrapped in layers and layers of blankets. Is he wearing clothes? He can’t tell, unsure where his skin ends and the fabric swaddling him begins. He thinks he might be hungry. His throat and chest still burn, as if he had swallowed saltwater, and he cannot remember the last time he spoke aloud. Was it earlier this evening? Before the river, hadn’t he spoken with someone at the ceremony? That feels like a lifetime ago, though it was scarcely hours before. His memory is murky as muddy water; when he tries to bring the thoughts into focus, he just feels tired.

So he lets himself rest. Takes in what he can here. The pillow under his head is softer than he likes, but now, he’s grateful for it. He’s wrapped on all sides with sheets and blankets and quilts, like a mummy or an infant, so tightly that he cannot even move his arms without thrashing about. He doesn’t have the strength to do that. The room is small, an oil lamp burning low in the corner, a bookcase filled with titles he can’t make out, an armchair with a man’s coat draped over the back. The distant sound of a teakettle whistling.

Many questions spring to mind. _How did I get here_ and _where are my clothes_ and _am I actually alive_ and _why didn’t I die_ and, most of all, _where am I_ and _who is responsible for this_? Meaning, this gift or curse of continued life. He isn’t sure yet which is correct. It isn’t worth the effort to consider for too long. Makes his head hurt in the fingertip of space between his eyebrows, like an icepick driven into his skull.

He closes his eyes, wills the pain away somewhere else. Christ, it hurts, every part of him feeling as if he’s been beaten, a worse punishment than he ever received on a ship. A groan escapes him before he can contain it, and he immediately feels embarrassed for it, wishes he could cover his face. Wasn’t drowning supposed to have been easy? The water was supposed to have numbed him to all this, sent him out sleeping on the riverbed. Instead he’s left with a body he cannot trust, a mind he cannot master, an emptiness he cannot fill, and now, a debt he cannot repay.

In the next room, a clattering of china. He is sent back, immediately, to officers’ messes of the past, all of them bleeding into one another, all of them haunted by Franklin’s scorbutic specter, who even in death looks at him with reproach. He is on _Stag_ and _Hecla_ and _Terror_ with Parry and Ross and Franklin and—he cannot bear to say the name—that nuisance of a boy who had become a nuisance of a man and stolen everything from him.

He should not be so tormented by these memories. They ought to have been drowned in the Thames as well. Briefly, he wonders how difficult it would be to drag this body of his back to the river and deposit himself there again. Surely there would be no complication of rescue the second time. Perhaps when he has gained a little strength, in the morning or some days from now, when he can lift his head without a herculean effort, he will dig his way out from under these blankets and make that long walk to the riverside again. He knows he will not fail a second time. He will try harder to die.

He is thinking of how, this time, he will let the water fill his lungs more quickly, let the current pull him under, not fight so hard against his will to live, when there is a presence at his side. A body next to him on the bed. A low voice, resonant and warm as the summer sea, saying, “I’ve brought you some tea.” Then, arms behind him, helping him to sit up, adjusting the blankets around him. Like being mothered. He almost manages a _thank you_ , but the words hang in his throat, too struck by the kindness and steadiness of hands firm on his back, being tended to.

“Francis,” the voice says, with such care that it breaks his heart. A familiar voice, he realizes now. Again, the meals in the officers’ mess, evenings after Franklin had died, evenings when he had drained whole bottles of whiskey as if they were water. He’d had to. How else was he meant to cope with the maddening recurrence of the man who had derailed his life—who had stolen Franklin’s favor, who had become the surrogate son that he so desperately wanted to be, whose disregard for right and wrong had kept him even from the woman he loved?

“You’ve got to keep warm,” the voice is saying, and though he is afraid to open his eyes to confirm what he already knows—he does.

Before him, proffering a cup of tea, something like concern in his eyes, is James Fitzjames.

*

In the aftermath of Fitzjames’ lashing, Crozier returns to his cabin with a new and hungry need burning inside him. He cannot make sense of it, cannot approach it too closely lest it disappear. Unbidden thoughts assail him, bizarre thoughts, thoughts of his hands around a slim young neck, thoughts of open wounds under his palms, thoughts of blood on his fingertips. The sounds of pain reverberating in his ears.

He checks twice, thrice, that the door is shut tight before shucking off his coat. The sudden chill bites at his neck, and he likes it, the way it makes his heart pump faster, how it attunes him to each sensation. He wants—he cannot say what he wants, though it sits at the tip of his tongue, a name held just behind his teeth. Curses his fingers for how they fail him now, how carelessly they disregard the urgency with which he moves, the thrum there under layers of fabric.

On _Dotterel,_ his commanding officer had been a lech of a man, the sort that mothers told their children to watch out for when walking through parks or alleyways. Crozier had hated him, _hated_ him, not the way he hates Fitzjames but the way he hates Franklin, a soul-deep repulsion at the man’s very existence. He’d caught the lieutenant looking at him sometimes, watching him, with the sort of gaze that made him feel pinned, an entomologist’s specimen. That man had been the one to order his lashing, and when Crozier was splayed out for the hurting, that lieutenant was there, devouring him with a look, lapping up the blood that ran down Crozier’s back with his eyes.

He doesn’t bother removing his trousers. He can’t say why, but he thinks this will be better if he doesn’t, thinks there will be something satisfying about the rushed nature of it, trousers and drawers shoved down around his thighs as if for some back-alley fuck. His palm is cold when he takes his cock in hand, and he shivers, steadies himself against the bed. Slowly at first, deep pulls to ease into this—even now, desire swells in him, a cup full to the brim, nearly running over.

Christ, the _sounds_ Fitzjames had made. That’s what he brings to mind first: how softly Fitzjames had started, almost whimpering. The smallness of it amuses Crozier—Fitzjames, so cocksure, reduced to snivelling before the lash even struck him. How pathetic. And yet Crozier finds himself echoing those little whines as he works his wrist, thinking of how Fitzjames’ skin had accepted the lash so willingly, as the tree yields to the axe.

Had that lieutenant on _Dotterel_ done this? Thought of him this way? Crozier has always hoped not, found the mere idea of it abhorrent, but that was before this—this _craving_ took hold of him. It had started as a need for Franklin’s approval, and it still is—it _has_ to be—though it’s been perverted through Fitzjames somehow. That was where all of this began, all of it first started to unravel—those forged papers, those dark eyes. He spits into his palm, tightens his grip. Remembers those eyes gone glassy with tears.

He knows about Fitzjames. What kind of man he is. The sort who thinks rules are for the bending. Crozier’s only regret is that he hadn’t seen it earlier, when he’d tried to be kind—he’d thought he was doing a misguided boy a favor, letting him on the ship, and what does he have to show for it now? A captain who hates him, who thinks he’s cruel for cruelty’s sake, who would not deign to praise him even if Crozier saved his life.

Perhaps he is cruel. He had enjoyed the lashing. He can admit this to himself, here, where he does not have to hide his pleasure at remembering the new shape of Fitzjames’ body, molded by the cat. If he is cruel, it is because he wants to be _right_. He had slipped, letting Fitzjames on. Shown Franklin his weakness. He won’t let it happen again. He must make himself irreproachable.

His breaths are heavy now, and he bends over the bed, biting into his knuckles to keep from moaning. Sinks an incisor into the cold-numbed flesh and pierces it. The metal taste of blood in his mouth, an ascending sort of feeling just below his stomach. He closes his eyes and imagines a body beneath him, long and thin but rife with muscle. A back abraded—no, scarred—the old wounds pink and smooth where the skin was broken long ago. He wants to count each spot, feel the strange damaged flesh. Crozier wants him yielding, ancient pains new and hot under Crozier’s hands, wants him loud and quiet at once. Wants to wring that mournful sound out of Fitzjames again, like a war widow wailing for her lost husband. He says it aloud, _Fitzjames_ , muffled into his fist. Again, with all the hate and bile and poison he can muster, _Fitzjames_ , a hiss, his teeth gritted, _Fitzjames_ , _Fitzjames_.

He doesn’t realize how close he is until he’s gone too far, and then he’s tumbling over an edge and scrabbling for purchase, but it’s useless. He spills himself with a grunt, the taste of the man’s name gone sour in his mouth.

He will do his best to forget this night. How he had thrilled at the thought of rutting against James Fitzjames, fucking like the fleas and rats in the hold. How it had excited him. How, in a moment of depravity, he’d licked the spend from between his own fingers and pretended, childishly, that it was Fitzjames’ and not his own. He will try to make himself believe it was a dream, a drunken reverie, anything other than what it is: a revelation, a transformation, the start of something that will drive him to drown.

*

Is Crozier a traitor to himself if he drinks the tea? If he accepts Fitzjames’ care? There is no sign of resentment in the man’s eyes, but Crozier cannot allow himself to believe it. He fights the urge to run, not least because he does not trust his body to carry him. Instead he stares at the cup, Fitzjames’ outstretched arms, the nearly-imperceptible trembling in Fitzjames’ hands. “Drink, Francis,” Fitzjames says.

It seems impossible. A part of him wants to knock the cup and saucer away, sending scalding tea splashing over their hands, the sheets, the floor. Anything to get away from this man to whom he now owes a terrible debt. He did not want to live, does not want to live, especially if it means being beholden to Fitzjames.

“Christ,” Crozier says, blinking. His voice the serrated edge of a knife. “You.”

Fitzjames looks puzzled. He sets the cup on the bedside table and turns back to Crozier. Watches him. “I’m afraid so,” he says, sweeping aside a loose lock of hair. “What do you remember?”

At once, both too much and not enough. He remembers the river, the water in his lungs, and he remembers the hours before: drinking whiskey in a golden room crowded with too many people he knew. How the air was celebratory yet somber, the presence of so many friends and acquaintances marred by the absence of others—most notably, Franklin, who seemed to fill up the room despite having died months earlier. He was everywhere, lurking, watching with scorn, as he had in life. Crozier had felt like a ghost, too, as if seeing from outside his own body, passing through clusters of people unnoticed, forgotten.

There was more to it than that, he knows, but he can’t bring himself to speak it. He clears his throat, glances up at Fitzjames. Says nothing.

Fitzjames purses his lips. Crozier knows this look, knows there is something Fitzjames wants to say that will set the two of them at odds. It always comes back to this: two men with the unacknowledged weight of a shared lifetime between them, hanging Damoclean over their heads. Finally, he says again, “Drink.” Inclines his head to the cup. “I’ll not leave you until you do.”

Crozier sighs. He wills his arms to move, wills his hands to hold, wills his mouth to drink. This body has always been uncomfortable to live in, but now it feels alien, these limbs like strange implements of unknown purpose. The tea is good, sweet, shot through with the familiar tang of lemon juice, and the knot in his throat loosens as he swallows.

He tries to ignore the pressure of Fitzjames’ eyes on him. It will be too much to look up and see sympathy in Fitzjames’ face, his forehead creasing with the concerned arch of his brow. The only sympathy Crozier wants now is an understanding of his desire to die, which burbles up in him again as he drinks.

This was supposed to be over. There should be no tea, no blankets, no Fitzjames. Just the easy release of obliteration. Fitzjames doesn’t understand that, will _never_ understand that. He drinks down to the dregs, then pushes the empty cup and saucer at Fitzjames, wanting to be rid of it.

“Good,” Fitzjames says. “How are you feeling?”

Again, Crozier says nothing. Fitzjames doesn’t want an honest answer to this question—he wants to hear thanks and apologies and everything but the truth. Crozier focuses on the loose weave of the blanket, worn and soft from use. It occurs to him—is this Fitzjames’ bed? He doesn’t ask; he can’t bear the shame of hearing the answer. He balls his fists into the blanket and watches his knuckles go white.

“I’ll leave you to rest, then,” says Fitzjames. He hesitates for a moment before standing, glancing at Crozier as if he wants something. Crozier doesn’t indulge him, but meets his eyes, finally.

Fitzjames looks at Crozier the way he had the night he was lashed. Tired, helpless, searching. Crozier does not know what to make of that. Then Fitzjames blinks and stands and fusses with the lamp in the corner, adjusting the flame until it is just barely burning. He’s in shirtsleeves, Crozier realizes now, which suddenly rekindles an old yearning to see the landscape of wounds on Fitzjames’ back. He screws his eyes shut. That ought to have been left on the ship where it belonged.

The river was meant to be a simple end to all of this. Perhaps if he had sunk faster, not fought so hard—this could have all been done. He’s seized with a sudden mournfulness over this, this terrible gift of life he’s been burdened with. He didn’t _want_ this. He had wanted to drown. Or, at least, he had wanted not to live. He wanted to feel nothing, be nothing. He wanted the simplicity of oblivion.

Crozier finally summons up the strength to speak when Fitzjames is passing by the foot of the bed, palm on the threshold. Says, “You ought to have let me die.”


	2. The Interior of Despair

_Hecla_ haunts him long after they’ve returned home. Franklin hates him; Crozier feels it radiating off of him, and it spreads, epidemic, through the Admiralty. There are whispers about his behavior, how he drinks too much and cares too little, except for when Fitzjames is involved, and then he cares more than any person should. Franklin had doted on Fitzjames for the rest of the expedition, so fatherly it turned Crozier’s stomach, and Crozier hates them both all the more for it.

Though, what he feels for Fitzjames is not hate, exactly. It’s something deeper than that, a revulsion that crosses the line to obsession. Crozier admits this to himself only in the dead of night, when sleep won’t come and he’s stuck groping at himself again, trying to conjure up the memory of Fitzjames’ body, the precise positions of his wounds. In the mornings-after, he does his best to deny his feelings, whatever they may be, and shoves the dirtied sheets aside, ashamed.

Fitzjames is inescapable. Crozier does not see him—in fact, he intentionally avoids wherever Fitzjames or Franklin might be found—but his presence is everywhere. In the papers, there are excited accounts of Captain Chesney’s prospective expedition into Persia, grandiose plans to navigate the Euphrates and take hold of a new slice of land for the Commonwealth. James Ross, always generous with information, tells him that Fitzjames will be joining Chesney, how Fitzjames had given up a position on _Winchester_ for the opportunity to scout a godforsaken muddy river in the middle of the desert.

Not a week later, before the steamers have even set off, Fitzjames himself is in the paper, having dragged some man from the River Mersey at great risk to his own life. Crozier snorts when he reads it. _The fool_ , he thinks. The paper says Fitzjames was given a silver cup for his “act of valor”, and Crozier imagines Fitzjames polishing it over and over, just to see his own face reflected in the contours of the cup. Everything about Fitzjames is an act designed to impress some higher-up, Franklin or Chesney or even Crozier, as it had been once. An unsteady foundation on which to build a career, Crozier is sure, but Crozier’s own career is looking less and less steady by the day.

Ross asks Crozier to be his second on _Cove_. It feels like an offer made out of pity, but he’s in no position to decline, having drunk away most of his pocket money. He says yes. He knows Ross well, anyway, and the Arctic feels more like home than London ever has.

There’s a question left hanging between them after Ross asks him to join _Cove_. Crozier senses it in the air, the same question that follows him like a stink— _is what they say about you true?_ Ross is the closest thing to a friend Crozier has, and still he feels compelled to ask, even if he doesn’t quite say it aloud. Crozier doesn’t know what the answer would be. Doesn’t truly know what they _do_ say about him. That he’s cruel, that he’s a drunk, that he wants to be some man’s wife? To deny any of them would be to protest too much. Instead, Crozier says how happy he’ll be to get back on a ship, to be back in the ice, and he tries to ignore the peculiar twitch of Ross’ lip, like this isn’t a satisfying enough response.

When he’s convalescing in Fitzjames’ bed, he will remember that story—Fitzjames, fifteen years earlier, diving into another river to save another man. And though it will set his ribs aching, he will laugh a grave laugh at how little things have changed, how little Fitzjames has changed. How, even at thirty-five, Fitzjames is still desperate for attention—desperate to be loved, to be seen. Crozier will wonder, had that man _wanted_ to be saved? Or, in the weeks after Fitzjames’ heroic rescue, had he returned to the riverbank, checked that no one was around, and then dived back in, finishing what he’d set out to do in the first place? He will want to ask Fitzjames this but will not find the time or the strength. He’ll try not to think about how little things have changed for him, too, but it’s no use avoiding what’s true: he’s still lonely, still pathetic, still a coward, after all this time.

*

He needs a drink. He doesn’t know how many days it’s been, how long he’s been in and out of consciousness in James Fitzjames’ bedroom, but he reckons he hasn’t gone without for this long in years. Even on _Terror_ , he was careful to mete out his stores, stretching them as the expedition did, watering down the whiskey until it tasted like almost nothing. He’d been down to two bottles when they were rescued—he’s afraid to think of how it might have gone if those, too, had run out.

The problem with sobriety is how deeply he has to feel things. Under normal circumstances, this would be a challenge, and now, after the river, sensation drags him down like a current. His body aches; he learns new parts of himself by how much they hurt. From time to time, he is still wracked with coughs, and it feels as though he’s hacking out his very lungs, ripping them apart from the inside, still trying to expel whatever water is left inside him. His ribs are made of blades that cut him when he moves, sleeps, breathes.

He wants to be numb again. What’s beautiful about whiskey is that it burns all the way down, and then—the sweet, comforting feeling of fuzzed edges, everything slightly softened, the world that much less painful, even for a moment. Now, though, he’s at the wrong end of a Faustian bargain, all those years of whiskey-warmed oblivion coming back to him in full, vibrant, terrible color.

It’s demeaning to beg, but he does. When Fitzjames wakes him with tea or soup or some other thing he can hardly bear to consume, he pleads like a child. One last drink, that’s it, just one more sip to savor and then he’ll be done, he’ll be sober, he’ll be good. But Fitzjames is a brick wall, his mouth a thin line, his answer a resounding, unyielding _no_.

When Crozier lashes out, sends a cup and saucer tumbling to the floor, Fitzjames remains firm, scooping up the shards of shattered porcelain with his hands. He nicks his thumb on a sharp piece and Crozier watches him suck at the blood that bubbles up, the tip of his thumb slick with saliva. It’s a thoughtless act, one that Fitzjames no doubt forgets moments after it happens, but in these days of sharpness and sorrow, it settles over Crozier like a fog. A flash of red on Fitzjames’ lips, the liquid sound, cheeks going concave, dark eyelashes downcast against pale skin.

Crozier remembers that night on _Hecla_ : blood, salt, heat. Need that overtook him, more than his need for drink. It starts to simmer again. Had it ever really stopped? Fitzjames says, _I’m not keeping you here_ , says, _you’re not a prisoner_ , but Crozier is, to his want for whiskey and his want for Fitzjames.

That _is_ what this is about, isn’t it? He thinks, as he often does, of a map—a chart of waterways, rivers, across the landscape of a life. His life. Once, he believed there was some moment when these rivers forked, when he chose one tributary or another. He believed had made a decision that first day Fitzjames appeared, with his false papers and false smile. Crozier has imagined versions of his life where he sends Fitzjames away and never sees him again, his name becoming a distant memory, long forgotten when he falls into bed with Sophia and she calls him _Francis, darling_.

But that life is as much an unattainable dream as the Passage; if there was ever a way to it, Crozier has long since passed it. No. The map he pictures tracks a single river, old and meandering, branching only to return to itself further downstream. There was never a choice, never an opportunity to avoid this: the cascading waterfall that is James Fitzjames.

When he was a young boy in a church pew, he had learned about predestination—too large and fearsome a concept for a child. That is the word that comes to mind, though, when he thinks of his life, how he’s ended up here. Predestined. Fated, like Oedipus, to doom and damn himself. Attempting to change or avoid it is futile. And as Fitzjames plies him with cups of water and pieces of bread and, bitterest of all, kindness, Crozier decides to give in.

He takes what Fitzjames gives him—tea, blankets, time—and, though he does not say _thank you_ , he does not resist, either. Does not ask again for whiskey or wine or any other thing Fitzjames might offer. Instead, he drowns in the intoxication of surrender—to Fitzjames, to life, to the unnerving idea that they might be one and the same.

*

Despite the shadow that follows him wherever he goes, Crozier manages to advance. After _Cove_ , he’s promoted to commander, and it feels _good_. In truth, he had never expected the promotion to come, Franklin’s poison infecting the Admiralty from the roots, but it’s good to be recognized for his work. He suspects Ross is responsible for any goodwill the Admiralty still holds for him—Ross has again named him as second, this time for a long voyage to the Antarctic. Maybe it’s nepotism, but Crozier is prepared to answer any questions the Admiralty spits at him: _who else would you send?_ _Franklin?_

There is talk, of course, of Fitzjames—Fitzjames the hero, Fitzjames who, when the _Euphrates_ expedition imploded, _walked_ the many, many miles from the desert back to London, a feat so incredibly brash and stupid and vain that Crozier scoffs aloud when Ross relates the story to him. It isn’t a surprise, of course; Fitzjames will do anything for a lick of attention, even if it means putting himself at risk. He’s the inverse of Franklin, in that way—staking his own life on the promise of a single word of praise. Franklin wastes others, but Fitzjames will waste only himself. At least there’s some honor in that.

Crozier is happy for the opportunity to rejoin Ross, his friend, though he feels at times a surprising disdain for Ross’ success. It’s in his name, baked into his blood. Crozier was never given any such advantage. When they return home from the Antarctic and Ross is celebrated for their discoveries (the Barrier, the birds, the mountains, the Pole), Crozier will think, _that ought to be me_. He’s as capable as anyone, as Ross, has been studying magnetism and the movements of the stars for as long as he can remember. He knows his worth, knows that despite where he comes from and who he is, he’s a good sailor. Perhaps even a great one. He wants to be a good captain one day.

Fitzjames had said that once, too.

On the nights when he is angriest, Crozier imagines burning Fitzjames’ career to the ground. It would be easy. Those old forged reporting orders are filed away somewhere; it would only be a matter of making some underpaid clerk dig them up. From there, the issues are clearly evident—the misspellings, the wrong date, Fitzjames’ absence from any prior voyage. The Admiralty would see that, surely. Though the lot of them are dolts, even they would not be so stupid as to ignore the obvious. The whole thing would fall apart, and Fitzjames would be forced to explain himself, finally. Crozier thinks of grabbing him by the collar and asking, _who do you think you are?_ He doesn’t care about the answer; he just wants to see the fear in Fitzjames’ eyes.

*

He’s been sober for a little under two weeks now, according to Fitzjames, and more than anything, he feels angry. That’s the only word for it—anger that he mostly turns inward but that spills, sometimes, out of him. He paces from room to room, stretching the weak muscles atrophied from days in bed. It frustrates him, how exhausting the act of walking has become, how he must stop now and then to catch his breath, how even the smallest struggle for breath plunges him back into the river, sets him gasping, clutching at his chest, wishing over and over again that he had succeeded.

Fitzjames is patient and kind and it just makes Crozier angrier. He wants to know _why_ —why Fitzjames hasn’t forced him to leave yet; why he hasn’t left of his own volition. Despite their shared years, they talk very little. When they sit opposite one another at the table for supper, Crozier feels as though he’s entering into combat. Fitzjames observes him in silence, doesn’t eat until Crozier has eaten first, watching him like a concerned mother.

It makes no sense. And it makes even less sense that Crozier should find some comfort in Fitzjames’ presence, but he does, against all reason or good judgment. He cannot remember the last time someone cared for him, took care of him, like this. In the evenings Fitzjames brings him water to wash, and in the mornings Fitzjames brings him tea, and all throughout the day, Fitzjames is there, checking on him or sitting quietly while he paces or offering him the paper.

Regardless, Crozier is still angry with Fitzjames, with the world, and with himself. He is angry that his life has brought him here when he had showed so much promise; he is angry that Fitzjames is the one who set everything in motion, all those years ago. He’s fifty-two now, finally a captain; his world ought to be just opening up with possibilities. Instead, he’s here, with nothing to show for his years but the bags under his eyes and a heart heavy with the names of dead men. He is terrified of the thought of returning to the sea, knows that if he does, all the demons in the shapes of sailors will take hold of him again. The only thing that scares him more is the idea of never returning, because what is a captain without a ship? Like asking what a night sky is without stars—impossible and useless.

It’s an early afternoon, the light through the windows painfully bright, when the place begins to smell like roasting flesh. The smell has a unique and terrible effect on Crozier in that it both whets his appetite and turns his stomach. He has blocked out most of that night on the ice, but the scent—he’s never been able to shake it. How starved he’d been for sustenance then, how often he’d fantasized of finding some animal and tearing it apart with his teeth, how, when his men had burnt up before him, his mouth had watered at the fleeting thought of gnawing the charred muscle from their bones.

And here it is again, in London, where it was never meant to follow him. That old hunger rears its head and Crozier is repulsed with himself for it, as angry with himself as he is with anything, and that anger and hunger simmer inside him until he is at the table with a fatty piece of pork on his plate, at once rapacious and revolted, and Fitzjames is watching him. Studying him.

It reminds him of childhood Sunday dinners—the eagerness with which he’d anticipate his father saying grace, the way he would wait, as Fitzjames does now, with his fork and knife poised above the cut of meat, ready to rip into it.

He wants a drink. He wants to not have to think about this, to not have to feel what he feels, to not have to face explaining this failure to Fitzjames. In the Arctic, there were so many times when he ought to have died—but he’s here, agonizing over a piece of pork because it reminds him of Stanley’s scorched skin and the sounds of his men burning up. Fitzjames should know that. Shouldn’t he? It was his fault; it had been his idea. He ought to be the one wracked with this guilt and fear over something so small and everyday as a smell.

But Fitzjames just looks hungry. And Crozier wants that uncomplicated hunger so much that it maddens him. Try as he might, though, he can’t bring himself to eat—the pale white meat ensconced in crisp skin is too familiar, makes him ill to think about.

“Francis,” Fitzjames says, “eat.”

He’s looking at Crozier with intense attention, focus like a blinding light. Crozier shakes his head and silently hopes Fitzjames will understand this without explanation.

Fitzjames sets down the fork and knife, brow furrowing. “You’ve got to eat,” he says. “Your condition has vastly improved, but we can’t stop trying now.”

Crozier blinks. Glances down at the food again, then back up at Fitzjames. “I don’t understand what your intent is here,” he says plainly. Fitzjames starts to speak but Crozier cuts him off, saying, “I never asked you to rescue me.”

“Francis, you were drowning.”

“By choice!” Crozier’s hands have tightened into fists, knuckles digging into his thighs. _Francis_. It may as well be someone else’s name. “You—you stole that from me.”

“I’ll not apologize for saving your life, if that’s what you’re asking,” says Fitzjames. His eyes narrow. “If I see a man in danger, I step in. I know you’d do the same.”

Crozier wants to ask, _how can you say that?_ _Have you forgotten?_ All Crozier has ever done is stand by and watch others get hurt. All he’s ever done is be the one ordering the hurting.

“Thought you’d get another silver cup for pulling me out, did you?”

Fitzjames scoffs. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous.”

He hates the curve of Fitzjames’ mouth, the lines of his face, how he refuses to get angry. A different man—a lesser man—would have brought this to blows already, long ago. Fitzjames is cool, cutting his pork into pieces as if to show how unaffected he is.

Crozier thinks now of the river, the momentary fear he’d felt giving way to blissful unconsciousness. This would have been easier, for both of them, if Fitzjames had just let him die. Why live if every moment of it is agonizing? Why go on if every day is a fight to stay alive?

“I don’t understand how I got so bloody lucky to be rescued by _you_. Of all the souls in London.” Crozier almost laughs.

“I followed you. Is that what you want to hear? You were all mops and brooms when you left and I didn’t want to read about you in the papers later on.” Fitzjames’ palms are flat on the table, his upper lip curled slightly. Crozier hasn’t seen him look like this since that day years ago on _Hecla_ , when Crozier had caught him stealing the biscuit. Like a cornered animal. “You’ve been a shambles since we returned. I was hardly the only one disturbed by your conduct that night.”

And then Crozier _does_ laugh, a short and guttural thing. “My conduct,” he says, breathless. “Please.”

“Yes, Francis, your conduct. You—“

“Why risk your own life for someone who wants to die? Hm? Do you regret it? God-damned good Samaritan. Every day I think about doing it again.” He reaches for the plate, wants to thrash it to the floor, but the smell, the terrible way it makes him salivate, paralyzes him. His fingers are trembling. He realizes how strained his breathing has become, the way his chest is heaving. This body will betray him at every opportunity it gets. His vision blurs.

The screech of a chair sliding against the floor; the clatter of silverware against china. A glance up, and Fitzjames is towering over him, broad-shouldered and tall and suddenly feeling like a threat. Crozier withdraws into himself for a moment, expecting a blow, but—none comes. Fitzjames is gathering the dishes, putting the kettle on, covering the offensive cuts of meat with towels and dishes, setting them out of sight. And then he is opposite Crozier again, nothing between them this time, looking just as intently at Crozier as he had before.

He begins to speak, his voice low, so quiet Crozier must strain to hear. And when he does, Crozier can hardly believe what he’s hearing: a story about a man who was a child who was born in Brazil, a child without a father or a mother, a bastard child who was, by all accounts, a burden. That child, not even two years old, on a ship to London, rocked to sleep not by a mother’s arms but by the swell of the sea, christened in a church on Marylebone Road with a name like a bad pun: James Fitzjames. The rest of the story, Crozier already knows— _Hecla, Euphrates, Excellent_ , Zhenjiang, Bombay, _Erebus_. All those acts of derring-do and bravery merely cries for attention, validation, the hope of becoming something more than a man with a made-up name.

He talks, briefly, of Franklin. It always comes back to Franklin. Fitzjames says, _he wasn’t a father, exactly, but a friend_ , says, _he was very important to me,_ says, _don’t you miss him, too?_ Crozier shows restraint, shrugs instead of laughing.

And then, after a pause, the strangest confession yet: “I know you and I have had our differences, but I do owe a great deal of my success to you.”

Crozier looks up then, certain this is a joke, but Fitzjames’ face is serious. Fitzjames stares at the table, tracing the woodgrain with a fingertip. Because he doesn’t know what else to say, Crozier says, “What?”

“I idolized you, Francis. I always thought that was clear.” In this moment, Fitzjames looks young again, young as he did on _Hecla,_ that very first day. The same arched eyebrow, the same defiance there under the surface. “You tolerated me. You taught me about magnetism. You let me on the ship. I have you to thank for all of this, really.”

 _All of this_ —the fame, the glory, the status. Things Crozier has been denied his whole life because of who he is, opened to Fitzjames after one act of kindness. Of course. On some level, Crozier has known this forever, but hearing Fitzjames actually say it is something new.

“Why are you telling me this?” Crozier says. Wants Fitzjames to acknowledge that he’s bragging, that it’s a subtle way of saying _I’ve surpassed all you’ll ever be_. Crozier’s stomach turns again, bile rising in his throat.

Fitzjames speaks slowly, choosing each word carefully. “I—I know that you are finding it difficult to see the worth of your life. I believe that all of us who made it home are finding it a challenge. But, from one man to another, I truly am grateful to you.”

He’s looking at Crozier now with wide, dark eyes, begging for acceptance. This face, with its angles and curves, its sad mouth—Crozier wants to hold onto it. Another treasure to hide away and savor, the way he’s crystallized the night of Fitzjames’ lashing and tucked it in some locked-up corner of his mind, to be revisited in moments of desperation. He smells smoke again, feels it filling up his lungs.

Crozier says, “I don’t need gratitude from a man as illegitimate as his papers.”

And he expects these words to satisfy some need in him, expects to feel relief or joy when he sees the way they tear at Fitzjames, but it never comes. Fitzjames’ face flushes red, he clears his throat, he shuts his eyes tight. It’s easy to imagine him as a child now, scolded for some misbehavior, crying in a corner with his face in his hands. When Crozier was younger, in those days on _Hecla_ , perhaps even later, on _Terror_ , the image would have made him feel something close to pride. How easy it is to crush something fragile and small and hopeful. Now, as Fitzjames turns away from him, Crozier wants to reel those words back in, undo all the little wounds they’ve caused, perhaps even apologize.

It’s an unfamiliar feeling. He has never been the sort of person who cared about hurting people, particularly where Fitzjames is involved. But watching Fitzjames’ face crumple, watching tears settle in the lines that slash his cheeks—Crozier thinks, _oh, Christ_ , and feels an unmistakable urge to fall to his knees and beg forgiveness, for this and for everything.

*

Sophia Cracroft enters Crozier’s life like a storm or a wave, overtaking him in a way that feels inevitable. He loves her and loves her quickly, overfull with it, harboring the sort of romantic fascination with her that had colored his childhood—thoughts of a pretty young schoolteacher he’d wanted to impress by climbing the highest tree or keeping a stiff upper lip when he’d skinned his knee. With Sophia, it’s the same: he doesn’t brag, exactly, but is casual about his achievements—fellowship in the Royal Astronomical Society, his friendship with James Ross, his recent promotion to captain.

She indulges him, mostly. She listens to his grumbling, even when it involves her uncle, and when she can offer no soothing advice or kind words, she takes his face in her hands and kisses him, makes him feel like all the joy in the world is bound up in his body.

Franklin and Fitzjames, though—they follow him everywhere. Even when he is with Sophia, they seem to be looming. Franklin disapproves, Crozier knows, and Sophia knows, too, though she seems unaffected by it. There are uncomfortable dinners with long silences, Crozier at one end of the table and Franklin at the other, like facing down an enemy across a battlefield. Lady Jane does not deign to acknowledge him, most of the time, and Franklin’s lips are constantly twisted in a false smile that does little to assuage any of Crozier’s concerns. Sophia always looks at him differently after those dinners, and he’s left wondering what lies Franklin has told her—or worse, what truths.

But he does love her. And, sometimes, he thinks she might love him, too. When they snatch a spare moment alone, their hands wander, lapping up every square inch of bare skin and then some. He has often found himself knelt before Sophia, nosing at her knee or thumbing the bone of her ankle, and wondering what it would be like to have this forever. He hungers for it the way he hungered for his captaincy, is desperate to take whatever benefits it might give him. And he wants her, Christ, her voice and her body and her laugh and her mouth, all of her, for the rest of his life.

On a cloudy day in 1844, he proposes to her for the second time. The first time had been casual, maybe even a joke, and she’d laughed and pushed him away and said it was too soon, her hand fluttering over his chest, and he’d gone home that night and buried his face in his pillow and wanted to die. But, in time, he’d gathered his courage and spent time with her again, and she was lovely and kind and beautiful and, occasionally, his.

He wants her more than just occasionally. He wants her, always, with no conditions.

So he decides to try again. He’s just been assigned to _Terror_ for Franklin’s expedition, departing in the spring, and he wants to have her here waiting for him to return. He isn’t the commander of the expedition—unsurprising, given Franklin’s influence—but he’s commanding _Terror_ , a ship whose curves and sighs he knows as well as Sophia’s. That’s something to be proud of. She ought to be proud of him for that.

Again, Crozier lowers himself to his knees before her, takes her hands in his. He says, “I should like to make you happy for as long as you’ll let me. Perhaps even the rest of our lives, if you permit it.”

The mask of horror and disgust that transforms her face stays with him, burns itself onto the insides of his eyelids and follows him wherever he goes. She tugs her hands out of his grasp. “Oh, no, please don’t.”

“Sophia,” he says. She looks away from him, almost flinches when he says her name. “But, I—I thought—“

She straightens her back, draws in a deep breath. Holds her hands in her lap, far out of his reach. “I care very deeply for you, Francis, you know that. That has not changed. But—Uncle has told me of how you conduct yourself at sea. Surely you do not expect me to assent to such behavior by giving you my hand.”

Crozier’s upper lip twists. “How I…conduct myself?” Such a dismissal ought to be reserved for men of the vilest sort, the murdering, thieving, sodomizing kind. Even Franklin would not spread such obviously false tales about him.

“He tells me that you have been cruel,” she says, and he realizes immediately what has happened. His hands are fists and he wants to drive them into the wall or the floor. Her voice wavers as she speaks. “It was years ago, I know, but to think of you delighting in hurting another person—it frightens me.”

He stands now, tries to ignore the way she shrinks back into the sofa like she’s trying to escape him. “The circumstances were strange,” he says. “It was only once.”

“Once is more than enough,” she says. She smooths the fabric of her skirts. “I have always thought you to be good and kind and just, but there is nothing just in whipping another man for taking a piece of bread.”

Sweat gathers under his collar. _Fucking Franklin. Fucking Fitzjames._ As if ruining his career weren’t enough, they’ve ruined this, too.

“It _was_ just,” he says, scrambling. “I know it may not seem so, but—having not been to sea, it’s difficult to understand—“

She rises to her feet. “Then help me to understand!” He has never seen her like this before—her cheeks hot and red, her chest heaving. He knows this is beyond saving. “I love you, Francis, I do, but I can’t abide this. Would you lash me, too, for taking more than my share at supper?”

Never. Never. He has only ever treated her like porcelain, like glass, something small and fragile to be held in his palms. The passing thought of her in pain makes him sick with loathing—for himself, more than anything. He steps away from her, stands at the threshold, far enough away that he cannot see the tears welling in her eyes. “Forgive me, Sophia,” he says, stilted. “I shall take my leave.”

Sophia is saying, “No, Francis,” but he is already down the hall, taking up his hat and coat, avoiding the grim looks from Franklin and Lady Jane that say they have heard it all.

*

Things change, a little, after that. Fitzjames has a defeated look about him, one that never seems to leave his face, and he does not try to talk to Crozier like he once had. It takes the absence of Fitzjames’ conversation for Crozier to realize that he yearns for it. His desire for whiskey subsides, still buried somewhere in him but no longer a throbbing, nagging pain, replaced with a soul-deep shame that rises now and then when he sees Fitzjames.

He thinks of the river often. Not of drowning himself, exactly, but of walking to the water’s edge and seeing his face reflected there, trying to make sense of what has happened. He thinks of asking Fitzjames, but Fitzjames looks wounded, and Crozier worries that any question would only further hurt him.

They dance around each other, in their way. Some mornings, Crozier wakes and Fitzjames is gone—no basin for washing, no kettle on the stove. Just a note on the table that says _Will return soon — JF_ and a sense of emptiness. After weeks of spending every last moment in each other’s company, it’s a hard shift to make. The house is too quiet without him; Crozier hardly knows what to do with himself.

He knows, of course, that he is responsible for Fitzjames’ leaving. Though he has tried to think of it any other way, he comes back to this over and over: he has driven Fitzjames away, has hurt Fitzjames again, and worse, he feels guilty about it. It’s strange, to suddenly be overwhelmed with this feeling that he’s done wrong and wants to fix it. Specifically, that he’s done Fitzjames wrong, not just in the previous weeks but perhaps over all the years their lives have been entangled. When Fitzjames comes home in the evenings, Crozier looks at him and sees: he’s just a man. That’s all he’s ever been.

Soon he will have to return home. He’s mostly functional, save the odd coughing fit that buckles him. The urge to end his life still niggles in the back of his head now and then, but it always has, and that voice is as quiet as it’s ever been. Not the screaming it had been on the night everything went sideways—just a whisper, almost friendly, a reminder than an exit route exists if things get bad again.

The truth is, the thought of ending his life now makes him hurt—not even for himself, really, but because of Fitzjames. The man is an enigma, alternately intriguing and infuriating, and Crozier can’t make sense of him. How is it that, after fifteen years of their lives intersecting, Crozier still knows so little of who Fitzjames is? The obvious answer is because he’s never asked, because he’s never seen Fitzjames as a human, because he’s never thought of Fitzjames as anything other than a symbol of all his own failures. Despite all that, Fitzjames has been kind to him. Fitzjames saved his life. That cannot be ignored.

When Fitzjames is home, Crozier spends hours thinking through ways to fix things. Is it even possible? There’s no way to undo everything—his years of cruelty, of hatred. Steam from a hot cup of tea twirls around Fitzjames’ face and Crozier wants to say, _I’m sorry for all of it._ Doesn’t even know what _all of it_ is, or how he would begin to say it, but he’s beginning to realize that Fitzjames is good. That’s the simplest way to put it: Fitzjames is good.

The night before he returns home, Crozier is restless, pacing the rooms again. His time here is running out, and he has a sense that once he leaves, the opportunity to mend things will have passed. He commits little details to memory: the worn spines of books, a map of the Passage, the boots marked with the initials _JF_ by the door. If any other person had pulled him from the water, Crozier would have been taken home and left to fend for himself. He can easily imagine how that might have ended up. But Fitzjames has nursed him back to health, and Crozier has been thankless, as ungrateful as a child to his loving mother.

Crozier wants to do something about this. He has imagined taking Fitzjames by the shoulders and telling him, _thank you, thank you_ , but to do so would feel hollow, too little too late. Fitzjames avoids him now, anyway, would flinch away if Crozier reached for him like that. Crozier is beginning to understand what terrors his hands have wrought, and the thought of inflicting more pain on Fitzjames—he can’t stand it.

So he keeps a safe distance, and he paces. He paces because it requires no thought, and he is still learning to walk again, anyway, so he can convince himself that it’s a useful way to spend his time. He doesn’t stumble anymore; the muscles in his calves and thighs are getting stronger. He has rebuilt this body from the ground up, this body he has never loved or cared for. That much hasn’t changed, but he is beginning to trust his body more than he ever has. He trusts it to carry him across a room, to pump blood through his veins, to keep him alive.

He is thinking about how he will adjust to being alone again when, from the corner of his eye, he sees Fitzjames in the kitchen, standing over a basin of water. He’s in shirtsleeves, his shoulders hunched, pale forearms exposed. Crozier keeps his eyes cast down, hyperaware of each creak of the floorboards beneath his sock feet. They have not spoken all day—have done, instead, their usual circling, avoiding one another. There’s something charged in the air, filling the cramped rooms, thick and tangible as fog.

Crozier walks in short strides, almost meditatively, each footfall carefully placed, heel to toe. The slosh of water in the basin, the rustling of clothes, Fitzjames sighing. In the uneasy quiet, this is all he can focus on: Fitzjames there, _being_ , terribly human. Even as he passes by and leaves Fitzjames behind him, he conjures a picture of Fitzjames washing, rivulets of water trickling over his skin. An old neediness stirs—not quite the same as the frantic want that had seized him on _Hecla_ , after the lashing, but some softer cousin to it, closer to what he’d felt for Sophia. He has to banish that thought, lest he linger too long on it, inspect it too closely, untangle what it might actually mean.

He slows his pace when he turns back toward Fitzjames, encroaching on his space with each step. Crozier takes in the careful way Fitzjames brings the wet flannel to his face, his neck, the low sound of his exhale at the press of damp cloth to flesh. Even in the Arctic, Crozier never saw him like this—at once shy yet unguarded, engaged fully in the restorative ritual of making himself clean.

Crozier cannot make himself look away. Try as he might, he’s entranced, watching Fitzjames go about this. He remembers days in his own quarters on _Terror_ , checking multiple times that the door was shut before undressing to his drawers and washing, slow as he could muster with the cold biting at him, drawing his hands over his body and imagining they were another’s. He had wanted desperately to be touched, then, and had gone to the Arctic hoping when he had returned, Sophia would have changed her mind. Some part of him, even then, knew she wouldn’t, but it was enough to think of her small, delicate hands on his neck, his chest, his arms. In his more resentful moments, Crozier pictured a smug young face with a smart, thin mouth, a defiant gaze, long fingers washing away the salt and sweat of a day’s work. How lonely he felt, trapped in the ice, certain he would die, and how, sometimes, the only solace was his own hands straying below his drawers, working until he was wrung out, a name he was too afraid to speak held just behind his teeth.

This is what he thinks of now: the nights when a dream of Fitzjames was the only thing that let him sleep; the days when the hope of arguing with Fitzjames over something trivial was all that kept him alive. So little has changed.

He is halfway across the room when Fitzjames unbuttons the cuffs of his shirt, bends, and pulls the shirt over his head. Crozier isn’t sure whether Fitzjames is ignoring him or doesn’t hear him or doesn’t care, but Crozier stops in his tracks, watches Fitzjames fold the shirt and set it aside, letting water run down his spine. Crozier wants to see—this isn’t enough—and so he steps closer, not so close that Fitzjames alters his actions but close enough that Fitzjames’ back comes into crisp, clear focus.

There, stretched diagonally from shoulder to side, are smooth white scars, spattered across his skin like fat splotches of paint spoiling a fresh canvas. Crozier recognizes them instantly—the pattern in which they fall, the places where they overlap, the ones that healed clean and those that are marred by puckered skin.

He remembers: fifteen lashes, delivered on his orders. Delight at the first drops of blood. A giddy, righteous glee that had washed over him upon hearing Fitzjames cry out.

Crozier thinks of pressing his fingers to these old wounds, like Thomas at Christ’s side. He half thinks he’s imagined them, a manifestation of his own guilt there on Fitzjames’ back. But no, they shift and move as Fitzjames does; water slips over them and they do not disappear. He’s marred this body, marked it for life, and for what? Every day he’s here, he hurts Fitzjames more and more, reopens these old spots with his words or his presence. Once, this wouldn’t have bothered him, but something has split him open. He looks at Fitzjames and feels an eternity of missed opportunities, an infinite number of universes where they are friends or acquaintances or even just crewmates, anything other than what they are—criminal and victim, predator and prey.

“I’ll be going home tomorrow,” Crozier says suddenly, without thinking. Fitzjames jolts, scrambles to pull his shirt back on, and Crozier regrets having said anything at all. He struggles for words, Fitzjames’ face flushing red, hands trembling. “I—I have taken advantage of your hospitality for too long,” he says. “It’s best I take my leave in the morning.”

Fitzjames turns to speak, but Crozier, flustered, merely gives him a nod and retreats to the bedroom, where he wraps himself in someone else’s sheets and blankets and holds his head in his hands.

*

They leave from Greenhithe in May, Franklin and Fitzjames on _Erebus_ and Crozier on _Terror_. As if the expedition itself were some great symbol, Crozier is constantly reminded by the position of his ship that Fitzjames, not he, is the favored son. When things go wrong, of course, Crozier will be the one tossed into command, but he will not take to it well—his men regard him with a distance and a scorn appropriate for a man known primarily to be a mean drunk, and mutiny brews on the lower decks from the moment they set sail.

He spends a great deal of time stewing. On one hand, he is grateful not to have to share a ship with Fitzjames and Franklin. But his mind spins paranoiac tales about them, conjures them laughing at his failure, discussing Sophia’s rejection, plotting to be rid of him at the first opportunity. He supposes it’s what he deserves—or, at least, it’s not unexpected, given their long history. When he had first learned that Fitzjames would be commanding _Erebus_ , Crozier had merely laughed. On some level, it felt inevitable, that they would once again be trapped in the ice together, Franklin looming all the while.

Fitzjames is a favorite among the crew, even those on _Terror_. His personality and propensity for outlandish stories have only grown since _Hecla_ , and it seems that every man knows each last detail of Fitzjames’ feats in China. Crozier buries the anger, soothes it with drink, tries to ignore that he needs more and more each night to take the edge off.

When they’re wintering at Beechey, the officers from both ships crowd into _Erebus_ ’ mess for dinner, salt pork and peas and unidentifiable tinned vegetables. It almost passes for delicious out here. Crozier withdraws from conversation, which is inevitably dominated by Fitzjames. But when the conversation slows, Hodgson asks, “The three of you were on _Hecla_ back in ’32, isn’t that right?” and nods at Franklin and Fitzjames and Crozier, and Crozier wishes he could evaporate.

Franklin is too forthcoming, all too excited to tell of _Hecla_ like it was a grand victory and not just a waste of the Admiralty’s money. Crozier eyes Fitzjames and sees that, for once, his mouth is firmly shut—he wants to beg Fitzjames, _say nothing_ , but doing so would make him weak, would imply that Fitzjames is the one with the power here. So Crozier speaks up instead, says, “He was one of my middies back then,” gesturing at Fitzjames with his thumb.

“I hardly remember it,” Fitzjames says, but there’s a hollowness to his voice that says he remembers it all.

Hodgson asks further questions, and Crozier sinks back, lets Franklin field them. Some part of him had thought, or hoped, that Fitzjames wouldn’t recognize him as the same man. And, more than that, Crozier had hoped that he wouldn’t feel so bedeviled by Fitzjames any longer, that the past would stay the past.

But in the Arctic and long after, time has a way of shifting, compressing, collapsing into itself on all sides. The past is the present is the future, and just as Crozier is here at the table, pushing peas around his plate, he is watching the cat strike a fine-boned young man’s back, and he is on his knees before Sophia Cracroft, asking for her to marry him, and he is in a ramshackle tent choking on smoke, and he is drowning in the Thames, and he is in his cabin with a cold hand in his trousers, palming at himself and whimpering someone else’s name. Everything that is or was or will be is happening now, happening always, over and over again, like a horrible dream from which he cannot wake.

*

Fitzjames insists on walking him home, and while the thought of Fitzjames seeing the squalid little place he lives makes Crozier want to shrivel up with embarrassment, he concedes, because Fitzjames is not the type to be told _no_. The morning is beautifully blue, a crispness in the air that signals the first snap of winter. It reminds him of the promise the Arctic had once held for him—though now it fills his lungs and makes them burn, makes every breath a challenge.

He’s tentative on the London streets. There are too many people around, and it feels sometimes as if every eye is on him. Like the stench of his failure draws attention. He knows that, in reality, they’re probably looking at Fitzjames, the glow of his just-received Sea Gallantry Medal emanating off of him, even as the medal itself lays forgotten beside a stack of books and old letters in the bedroom where Crozier has been sleeping.

After all this time, he cannot make sense of Fitzjames—why he walks beside Crozier now, his step slower than it once was, gray hairs glimmering at his temples; why he has spent these past weeks toiling over bowls of soup and cups of tea and basins of water for someone so unappreciative; why, given all these chances, he has not just let Crozier die. Worse yet, Crozier cannot shake the feeling that he’s safer with Fitzjames around. That, perhaps, he’s altogether _better_ with Fitzjames around.

“Francis,” Fitzjames says, “are you certain you’re ready to return home?” Hearing his first name said with such genuine concern makes something start to hurt.

Crozier shoves his hands in the pockets of his coat. “I can hardly keep imposing myself on you,” he says. It’s not an answer, and he _knows_ it’s not an answer. But his actual answer would send him running to the Thames again as soon as he spoke it.

“You’re not an imposition,” Fitzjames says. “I—what’s most important is that you’re well.”

He glances over. Fitzjames’ hair whips in the breeze, and the lines that extend from the corners of his eyes are cut deep, like cracks in marble, as he squints against the wind. Even the years in the Arctic, nearly starving, half-dead from scurvy, did not steal the light from Fitzjames’ eyes. Crozier wishes he could understand—by the end, he had been one of the healthiest, yet here he is, as tormented and tortured as any of the men who made it home. He’s tried and tried to destroy his body the way the illness did to Franklin and the others, but he’s alive. And, as Fitzjames says, he’s _well_.

From here there are two routes home: one wide and bright and sunlit that passes by the river, the other confined to cramped alleyways, constantly dense with the scent of musk and piss. He chooses the latter, though it’s slower and darker. He imagines walking by the river and feeling an inexplicable, undeniable urge to throw himself in. He can’t put Fitzjames through that again. Doesn’t want to be another spectacle. One day he might be braver, but—not today.

“I don’t understand why you’ve been so kind to me,” Crozier says. Fitzjames falls behind him as they squeeze through a narrow alley, stepping around suspicious pools of God-knows-what. He’s glad to not have to watch Fitzjames mulling this statement over. Crozier knows Fitzjames would look too earnest, too thoughtful. It would be impossible to bear.

“Well, I—“ Fitzjames starts, but then pauses with a sigh. “Perhaps it’s foolish of me, but—I’ve always held out hope that we might one day become friends.”

Crozier stops then, so suddenly that Fitzjames almost crashes into him. He wheels around, and Fitzjames is looking at him, startled, hands held in preparation to catch Crozier if he stumbles. “Friends?” Crozier says. It comes out sounding like an accusation, though that isn’t what he intends.

Fitzjames shakes his head, shuts his eyes. “I ought not have said anything—“

Crozier says, “How?” He gapes like a hooked fish. _Friends_ —it’s impossible. Which isn’t to say that Crozier doesn’t want the same thing, because, if he looks deeply within himself, he knows that he does. But the past stands betwixt them, impassable, the space between a bridge and the water below—dangerous and damning. He cannot be friends with a man whom he has harmed so egregiously; he cannot simply ignore all that has passed between them.

It has taken a long, long time, but Crozier is beginning to see the extent of the damage he’s caused. He has seen the way Fitzjames flinches, sometimes, at a loud sound or a suddenly raised hand, and, through the many midnights he has spent in Fitzjames’ home, he has heard how Fitzjames often wakes up shouting, gasping for breath. He has been too afraid to ask Fitzjames about these things, coward that he is. But he knows their source. Knows that if their paths had never crossed, Fitzjames would be better off.

“Is that really so hard to believe?” Fitzjames says. He gives a weak smile that says, _I’m trying_.

Crozier has to turn away then. Looking at Fitzjames so sincere and so open—it’s like looking directly into the sun. “I will never understand you,” he mutters. Behind him, Fitzjames sighs.

For a long time after that, they’re silent. Eventually they emerge onto a wider street and Fitzjames retakes his place at Crozier’s side. That’s how Crozier thinks of it— _his_ place. Fitzjames’ place. Idiotic. But who else would do this for him? Ross, possibly, but Ross has already saved him once, came all the way to the Arctic to save all of them. Maybe Blanky, though with his lame leg, it would be a challenge. Fitzjames is the only one, really. Despite the lash and the threats and the years of hate, _Fitzjames_ is the one who takes him home.

He has never been the type to forgive and forget; Crozier is more the sort to bury the hatchet with the handle sticking out. So to receive what feels like an unspoken absolution from Fitzjames is unbearable. As if everything could be left behind. He hasn’t been able to stop thinking of the scars on Fitzjames’ back since seeing them last night—scars _he_ caused, old wounds seared onto Fitzjames’ skin and the folds of Crozier’s brain.

Crossing a busy street now, weaving between clumps of people, Crozier recalls a dream from the previous night: pressing gentle, trembling fingers to those scars, and Fitzjames’ skin tearing at the lightest touch. He remembers blood, hot and scarlet, pouring over his knuckles, his palms, staining his own flesh no matter how hard he scoured. It would be easier and less painful to flay himself open than to try and mend what’s broken between them. The possibility of something good was shattered long ago. Crozier has seen the map of his life; he knows how this ends.

The rest of the walk is a haze. If Fitzjames speaks, Crozier does not hear it. He can only focus on the blood throbbing in his own head, the sound like a drum, like a gunshot. And then they are outside the door, and Crozier should feel relief, but he feels nothing. How many weeks has it been since he was here? Since he was really alone at all? Behind this door is not a home; it’s a nest of vipers. There’s enough whiskey stockpiled to drown himself many times over—the thought of it makes him nauseous—and he knows isolation will drive him once again to the bottle, or worse, the river. He places his hand on the doorknob and expects it to burn him.

“Well,” he says. “I should—suppose I should let you get home.”

Fitzjames is watching him with careful, ungrudging eyes, his lips twitching as if he wants to speak. Crozier doesn’t hurry him. Just waits, lets the moment stay suspended, like if he wishes hard enough, these weeks of comfortable purgatory can extend endlessly. Fitzjames tucks a loose strand of hair behind his ear and swallows deeply, throat working. Crozier sighs.

Finally, Fitzjames says, “Be well, Francis,” and he claps a hand onto Crozier’s shoulder. He squeezes, long fingers pressing in. Crozier feels each fingertip through the thick fabric of his coat. Fitzjames almost smiles, and he nods like a reassuring teacher, willing Crozier to be his best. Willing _Francis_ to be his best.

He wants to be good. He wants to be the person Fitzjames thinks he can be. And so Francis says, “I will,” and he takes a breath and says, also, “Thank you, James.”

Fitzjames smiles in earnest, then. _James_. He squeezes Francis’ shoulder again, gentle but firm, and lets his hand fall to his side. “I’ll see you,” James says, the words just words. Then he’s gone, sidling once again through crowds and around puddles, and Francis watches him disappear down the street, hoping against hope that he might look back.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of the fic is lifted from the following quote, from the Norman Denny translation of _Les Misérables_ : "Cosette and Marius saw one another again. What it meant to them we shall not attempt to say. There are things beyond description, of which the sun is one." The chapter titles are adapted from Isabel Hapgood's translation of _Les Misérables_.
> 
> Gracious thanks to [Liv](https://archiveofourown.org/users/icicaille) for betaing and talking me down when I had multiple freakouts about this fic, [Cee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reinetta) for patience and support (and for at least partially inspiring the structure of the lashing scene), and my partner for putting up with my nonsense.
> 
> Find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/himbodundy) and [Tumblr](https://birdshitisland.tumblr.com/)!


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